I’m just watching as this is reported live, but Adam Schiff just came out of the House Intelligence briefing and noted that the Republican Majority has voted to release only the Devin Nunes memo on a FISA Warrant for (reportedly) Carter Page.
They voted not to let the DOJ and FBI review the memo to make sure sources and methods wouldn’t be compromised.
They voted not to allow the Minority Memo to be released to the public, but it will be release to all House members.
They then revealed that their secret FBI/DOJ investigation which Devin Nunes has been heading up with other members such as Matt Geatz in coordination with the Trump White House is now official and totally partisan.
Reports are that the Nunes Memo claims that the FISA Court was not informed that the DNC had paid for some of the research generated by Fusion GPS on Carter Page and therefore the warrant was somehow invalid. This is besides the fact that it wasn’t just the DNC who had funded this research and that not all of it came from Christopher Steele. This apparently was a warrant to extend surveillance that was already in progress and had begun earlier as a result of other reports including the detection of communications between Trumpsters and Russia which were first reported to U.S. intelligence by Estonia. Later in March and April additional reports from GCHQ, Poland and Germany came in and a Kremlin Task Force was put together to between FBI, DOJ, NSA and Treasury who originally requested the Page warrant that month.
Carter Page was target by Russian intel to recruit as an asset in 2014, which was the first time a FISA warrant was approved for him, at which time Page acted as an informant for the FBI. That case led to the successful prosecution of Russian Intelligence Officer Evgeny Buryokov by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
As I stated this weekend in my summary of public reports on the Mueller case :
[Page traveled to Russia during the midst of the 2016 campaign and met] with Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations who told him of an impending sale of a large portion of their stock. Why he would tell him this when Rosneft was sanctioned is a good question, but the Steele memo alleges that Rosneft’s CEO offered Page a percentage of this sale in exchange for influencing Trump to drop sanctions. Naturally Page denies this offer, but he does admit discussing the stock sale with Baranov.
So the thought here is that the FBI shouldn’t have continued to keep this guy under surveillance?
And very coincidentally — Trump chose not to implement the updated sanctions against Russia that were approved by a Super-Majority of Congress.
Christopher Steele’s first memo was written on June 20th, 2016. Rod Rosesntein didn’t become Deputy Attorney General until the following year, so we’re talking about the renewal of that original warrant somehow being invalid when the original warrant was good?
It’s nonsensical.
Video over the flip.
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Tuesday, Jan 30, 2018 · 12:09:34 AM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
And there’s this.
President Donald Trump reportedly exploded in anger aboard Air Force One last week due to his frustration with the Justice Department and the Russia investigation.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the president erupted after learning that Associate Attorney General Stephen Boyd had warned against releasing a classified memo written by House Republicans that allegedly documents FBI surveillance abuse related to the Russia investigation.
So Trump is pissed off because the DOJ said that releasing the memo he hadn’t read yet — just might be dangerous. Apparently he cares more about his own ass, than the nation or our intelligence assets.